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IBM Buys Health Data Company

IBM has announced it has completed the acquisition of Phytel, a provider of integrated population health management software based in the US. Though the financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, they are expected to be in the low millions.
Phytel's area of expertise is in physician-led population health management software that develops and sells cloud-based services that improve long term health outcomes by helping healthcare providers and care teams coordinate care and engage patients to positively influence population health.
"The acquisition of Phytel supports our goal to advance the quality and effectiveness of personal healthcare by enabling secure access to individualized insights and a more complete picture of the many factors that can affect people's health," said Mike Rhodin, senior vice president, IBM Watson.
The acquisition helps IBM's efforts to apply advanced analytics and cognitive computing to help primary care providers, large hospital systems and physician networks improve healthcare quality. Phytel will become part of IBM's new Watson Health unit.
The software works with healthcare providers' current electronic health record technology to reduce unnecessary hospital readmissions and automates population health management, to help improve patient outreach and engagement. Because it is cloud-based, providers are not constrained with technology issues and can focus on outcomes.